Sci-Fi Storm

[Whoa…a new post?!?]

On Saturday at Loscon 50, at a panel on “The Influence Larry Niven has had on Science Fiction”, which the grand master himself in attendance and led by writer/producer Dr. Harry Kloor (Star Trek: Voyager), Kloor announced that the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle novel The Mote In God’s Eye, is in development as a series to be produced and written by Kloor and Joseph Mallozzi (Dark Matter, Stargate: Atlantis), with Mallozzi as showrunner. Michael Rosenberg (Hell On Wheels, Hung) also will produce.

Before getting your hopes up, this is just an “in development” announcement, and it still has a long road ahead of it, but I am very hopeful especially with Mallozzi involved.

Published in 1974, the The Mote In God’s Eye is set in the CoDominium universe of stories, in a time after a civil war destroyed the first Empire of Man, and while a second empire is forming, a lot of the advanced technology has become scarce and primarily in the hands of an interstellar navy trying to hold the empire together. The technology includes the Alderson Drive, a jump drive that allows ships to travel instantly via “Alderson points” that link the systems together along gravitic “tram lines” that connect between most all star systems. Ships still need to travel in normal space at slow speeds to reach these points, and also retain their momentum when they jump. There is also the Langston Field, a forcefield of sorts that can protect against and dissipate energy, including weapons fire – but if they are unable to dissipate the energy fast enough can have catastrophic results for the ship it is protecting.

In the Trans-Coal Sack sector of the empire (the opposite side of the Coal Sack nebula from Earth), the Second Empire of Man is recovering from devastating Secession Wars, and ships and Langston Fields have become scarce. On the other side of the Coal Sack, while the navy fights battles against rebels and pirates, a new potential threat is discovered – an alien space ship is approaching from a course from the “Mote”, a small star near a red supergiant called Murcheson’s Eye. No one has ever visited the Mote before, as the theoretical Alderson Point to jump to it would exist within the photosphere of Murcheson’s Eye itself. The ship is approaching New Caledonia via normal space – a solar sail craft launched over a hundred years earlier by a massive laser that for a time made the Mote brighter than the Eye. Now man’s first encounter with an alien species approaches, and the INSS MacArthur, captained by Roderick Blaine, is sent to intercept – only to result in an incident where the alien pilot – a strange brown and white furred, three-armed creature, is killed. A new mission is formed, including the MacArthur, to travel to the Mote and find out where the strange occupant came from.

The Mote In God’s Eye was followed up by a sequel, The Gripping Hand, in 1993, and an e-publication sequel written and published by Pournelle’s daughter Jennifer in 2010.